at the Leaders Forum 2019, around half of the participants (including key figures in EA) said that they don’t self-identify as “effective altruists
Small note that this could also be counter evidence—these are folks that are doing a good job of ‘keeping their identity small’ yet are also interested in gathering under the ‘effective altruism’ banner. (edit: nevermind, seems like they identified with other -isms) .
Somehow the EA brand is threading the needle of being a banner and also not mind-killing people … I think.
Would EA be much worse if we removed the ‘banner’ aspect of it? I don’t know… it feels like we’re running an experiment of whether it’s possible to nurture and grow global prioritist qualities in the world (in people who might not have otherwise done much global prioritism, without a banner/community to help them get started). It’s not clear if we’re done with that experiment—if anything, initial results look promising from where I’m sitting. So my initial thought is that I don’t quite want to remove the banner variable yet (but then again maybe Global Priorities could keep that variable)
Another point I’ve heard made a few times (and at-least-a-little agree with):
Let’s say Bob transitions from COO at a mid-sized org to finance manager at a small org. Bob has done finances before, and within a few months has set up some excellent systems. He now only needs to spend 10 hours a week on finances, and tells his manager (Alice) that he’s interested in taking on other projects.
Alice doesn’t currently have projects for Bob, but Alice and Bob saw this coming and set clear expectations that Bob would sometimes run out of things to do. Bob was fine with this, he’s happy to spend his extra time at home with the kids.
But also… Bob notices that their HR systems could use an upgrade. He writes up a plan and shares it at the next team meeting. Some people think this is a good idea, but the HR manager doesn’t want to implement the plan and Alice doesn’t want to put Bob in charge of HR systems.
Bob is a little confused but shrugs and goes back to building a chicken coop.
This happens a few more times, and it’s taking up more and more of Alice’s time to review Bob’s proposals. She likes Bob’s ideas and wants to find ways to implement them, but doesn’t like Bob’s leadership style so doesn’t want to put him in a leadership position. A couple other people in the org do like Bob’s style, and are confused about why he isn’t put in charge of more projects.
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So the takeaway is something like: even if you are hiring an experienced person to a junior role, you are essentially hiring them to a senior role because they think like a senior hire. If their work and ideas are not given the space to thrive (which means basically treating them as senior staff), then it’ll likely be a source of tension.
It’s harder to carve out a senior-shaped-hole at an organization and higher stakes to hire someone with more seniority (which in my mind means autonomy over a budget and maybe a report or two). Organizations do this successfully all the time but it’s a much more significant effort than hiring a junior role.
Or put another way: the more agent-y the person you hire, the more you’ll need to be careful about principal-agent problems.
There is a bunch of nuance in here and various solutions, but I think it contributes to some hesitance around senior>junior transitions.